


Sword of Tlen is Dead

by gostaks



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen, Painting, ghost ship - Freeform, major character death is one of the basically-an-oc characters, maybe hurt/comfort?, several original ancillary characters, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27323029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gostaks/pseuds/gostaks
Summary: What is left ofSword of Tlenis found on a search and rescue mission not far from the Provisional Republic of Two Systems. It's having a bit of a hard time adapting.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	Sword of Tlen is Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



> Hi Gammarad!
> 
> You asked for "Radch - a ghost ship -- possibly a person arrives on a ship, or just the ship alone, who has a few ancillaries still alive but the core is dead so it's just a matter of time - even if another ship shows up, there's nothing that can be done, the ship will be dead when its last ancillary is done." It sorta gained a life of its own, hope you enjoy!
> 
> (CW for brief descriptions of serious injury, medic-assisted suicide, voluntary ancillaryfication, and death)

The soldier pressed her helmet into the crack where the door hadn't quite sealed, sending a narrow slice of blinding light into my central access. I squinted at the door, trying to make out anything more than the height of the person outside. Beside me, One Amaat Seven glanced up, then returned to its task.

After one point six seconds, the soldier began, "Honored persons, my name is Lieutenant Seivarden Vendaai of _Mercy of Kalr._ This is a rescue mission. Any person or AI who wishes to apply for citizenship in the Provisional Republic of Two Systems may do so at any point. Otherwise, you will be treated using standard procedure for rescued foreigners." She paused there, clearly waiting for acknowledgement.

"What is the status of my crew?" I asked. My voice cracked—clearly I had inhaled more smoke than I'd realized.

"You three are the only living beings we found. I'm sorry."

She waited for a moment, then moved away from the cracked door and did something that produced loud thumps for 47 seconds. Her helmet light reappeared at the door soon after, "Is the internal release for the door functional? The external release is stuck, and we would prefer to avoid damage to _Sword of Tlen_ if possible."

" _Sword of Tlen_ is dead." I told her. The smoking wreckage of the AI core was directly across the room from me, "It doesn't matter if you damage it."

"Nevertheless, honored person."

I glanced over at the manual release, which had at some point torn itself from the wall and was now smoking slightly. "No. Lieutenant, there is nothing in this room but damaged equipment. Please do not waste your time."

She tried to argue, but I ignored her.

It took the better part of an hour for Lieutenant Seivarden to jack the door open, by which point the pool of blood on the floor had reached my boots. Throughout the process, she and several human soldiers had kept up a constant stream of conversation, occasionally trying to engage me and Amaat Seven in conversation. Such engagement helped rescuees stay grounded and feel like agents in their own rescues. In this case it was completely wasted.

Finally, the door crunched open and Lieutenant Seivarden stepped into the doorway. "Honored persons, if those of you who are mobile could please proceed outside for— _shit_ , _Medic!_ Stretcher in here _now._ " She stepped forward into the room, kneeling beside Amaat Seven. Beneath Amaat Seven's hands, Amaat Three, which had been bleeding out for the past two hours, lay on its back, a jagged shard of shrapnel protruding from its abdomen.

I stayed clear of the soldiers that rushed into the room behind Lieutenant Seivarden. Human—I expected that from _Mercy of Kalr_ —and putting less effort into pretending to be ancillaries than last I'd encountered them. A medic and a soldier wearing the typically-defunct badge of a medic-trainee bent over Amaat Three with scanners and correctives, while others poked at the smoking patches of wall, spraying a few suspicious spots with foam-based fire extinguishers. Another stood in front of me and asked questions which I answered automatically—I was _Sword of Tlen_ One Tlen Eleven, no I was not injured to the point of nonfunctionality, the Lord of the Radch was Anaander Mianaai, no I was not entirely sure where I was in space, beyond the fact that I must be close enough to the Provisional Republic of Two Systems for their flagship to send aid, and so on.

-

We were moved onto a shuttle, and from the shuttle into _Mercy of Kalr._

The corridors outside the airlock were painted in gorgeous bright colors, something representational rather than currently-fashionable geometrics. Each panel seemed to be a scene from Kalr's historical saga, and I walked down the corridor the detailed paintings became blocks of color, then thin pencil sketches on the walls—a work in progress. I resolved to meet the artist, then remembered that I was dead. There would be no time to discuss their methods before my implants were removed for recycling and this body was discarded.

Idly, I noted that the corridors around Medical remained the same neutral grey as the bulkheads, save what was probably a token to a provincial god—a stylized face with an inscription reading 'Kilroy was here'.

Medics had differing ideas of the best way to disable an ancillary for recycling, and none of them were pleasant for the ancillary in question. I was preparing myself for whatever came next when a soldier exiting Medical lingered in a doorway, allowing a snatch of conversation to drift in from outside.

"They're _ancillaries?"_

"Yes, Lieutenant Seivarden. Surely you noticed the uniforms?" That voice was one I had heard once before, scratchy and almost choked-sounding.

"I was distracted. The light was bad!"

"Of course, Lieutenant." There was a hint of a smile in her words.

The door slid shut behind the soldier, cutting off the next thirty seconds or so, before opening again to reveal a person in a Fleet Captain's uniform. The Fleet Captain was, incongruously, carrying a stack of folded black fabric. Behind her, Lieutenant Seivarden strolled past the door and down the corridor with a casually graceful gesture of acknowledgement.

" _Sword of Tlen,_ " the Fleet Captain said in her familiar scratchy voice, "welcome aboard _Mercy of Kalr."_

I gestured acknowledgement, "Fleet Captain."

The Fleet Captain set down her stack of fabric—clean uniforms, "Medic would like me to inform you that surgery on your Amaat Three segment is progressing well, but will likely take another hour, perhaps two. There is a small bathing chamber across the hall if you wish to clean your bodies. Otherwise, please remain in Medical until you have been examined."

"Thank you, Fleet Captain," Amaat Seven said. It was the first time it had spoken since the horrible moment when my mind had gone dark. 

"Why?" I hadn't intended to question the Fleet Captain, but the word left my mouth anyway.

"We don't waste ancillaries here."

" _Sword of Tlen_ is dead. This body is no more useful than the corpse of the ship. Why not simply recycle it?"

The Fleet Captain looked at me for a long moment, " _You_ are still alive. While you live, _Sword of Tlen_ lives."

"And if I prefer that this body be recycled?" I asked. Amaat Seven glanced at me, a bit of reproval in its face.

The Fleet Captain gestured her indifference, "Register your intention with Medic and wait the standard period, just like any other person."

I nodded my assent.

A human might, at this point, have reassured me that they had experience with a situation similar to mine, and that they were available as a resource, should I need answers or reassurance. The Fleet Captain simply turned and left.

-

Just over a minute later, in a motion that probably seemed synchronous to a human, Amaat Seven stood and I followed. My injured knee twinged as I put weight on it, but I ignored it. My gloves were cleaner, so I picked up the folded uniforms as I followed it to the bathing chamber.

Water ran black under my feet and red-brown under Amaat Seven's as we rinsed ash and blood off our bodies. None of the soap was of the cheap and scentless variety most officers preferred ancillaries to use. I settled eventually on something mild and herbal that didn't irritate the microabrasions on my palms too much, wordlessly passing the tube of gel back and forth with Amaat Seven.

Amaat Seven flinched when I reached over to clean its back. It was deeply odd to touch it, feeling only my single pair of hands without knowing what sensations it was experiencing. I worked quickly, trying to remove all the soot that had fallen behind its collar to form a chevron on its upper back. When I finished, I turned and allowed it to do the same to me, though every contact that I could not predict made my body stiffen.

We helped each other wash clean, though the soot would not quite leave the creases of my palms, and no amount of brushing would remove the blood under Amaat Seven's short nails.

-

Amaat Three emerged from surgery alive but unconscious, most of its torso and face covered in correctives. "It was hit in the head quite hard at some point," the medic told Amaat Seven, who was sitting next to the bed while I stood blankly in a corner. "It will be difficult to assess the damage until the swelling has receded."

Amaat Seven acknowledged and asked questions, which was pointless. Ancillaries did not survive brain injuries—dense and inflexible implants do not combine well with swelling organs. Amaat Three survived, if its brain was undamaged enough that it could continue to function, I still wouldn't be able to control it in any reliable manner.

Of course, that wasn't a relevant concern anymore.

The medic saw to Amaat Seven while the medic-trainee examined my body. She chided me for continuing to walk on a knee that had several hairline fractures and did not particularly like it when I told her that other bodies of mine had walked on worse. I submitted my request to be recycled and had it recorded, though the medic-trainee looked very confused for a second before cocking her head to one side and listening to _Mercy of Kalr_ speak into her ear. I was herded into a bed, right knee immobilized with a corrective, and ordered to stay still for the next eight to ten hours.

Eventually, my body slept.

-

I woke in the middle of the night, aware that, some time before, my perception of reality had simply stopped. That had never happened before. Ancillaries slept, but not all at once, and their unconscious had never meant _my_ unconsciousness before, not even the one time that I had entered an area with blocked transmissions and lost contact with several of my ancillaries. Given that I was not panicking, I had likely been drugged. I couldn't bring myself to particularly care about that—the panic I had felt in an isolated body had been unpleasant and unhelpful. Humans, and for that matter the Fleet Captain, managed hours of unconsciousness every day. I would simply have to cope until it was no longer a relevant concern.

The corrective on my knee was peeling around the edges, so I didn't feel particularly guilty pulling it the rest of the way off. The knee twinged as I rested my weight on it, but much less than it had the day before. Assuming that last night's application of correctives had been an examiniation, the letter of the Fleet Captain's instructions allowed me to leave Medical. If she had intended to say something else—unlikely, given what she was—I would still be easily findable anywhere on _Mercy of Kalr._

One Tlen Eleven, my current body, had long legs and a higher-than-average exercise-induced endorphin response. Typically, I would jog it around my lower decks at the beginning of its duty cycle, so I could wash it before it went to serve the officers. I wasn't quite confident about my knee yet, so I restrained myself to a brisk walk along _Mercy of Kalr's_ main loop. I passed several brown-uniformed soldiers as I went, but none moved to stop me.

Three quarters of the way around the loop, I found myself at the airlock mural. Two soldiers were standing beside it, humming two different melodies. They'd discarded their coats and switched their heavy uniform gloves for thinner ones. I stood at an inconspicuous distance and watched one mix thin paints in small bowls while the other unpacked a small case of brushes.

One picked up her brush and began painting, working on a panel with blocks of color but no details. The other turned to me, " _Sword of Tlen,_ you can come closer, if you like."

"Thank you, Etrepa." I moved forward until I was only a few meters away from the painters.

The soldier who had spoken to me picked up her own brush and began to lay down broad strokes of color over a sketch. After a few moments, she began humming again—a popular tune from a Radchaai children's entertainment. The particular entertainment was ongoing and had existed for only a few years, which likely meant that she had either children or younger siblings somewhere.

After two hours, in response to some signal that I could not detect, the soldiers began to pack their art supplies away. They gave me friendly gestures of acknowledgement as they left, likely to go on shift, assuming my internal sense of time matched _Mercy of Kalr's_ clock.

I approached the wall, cautious of touching the still-wet paint. I recognized some elements of the style—graphic elements that had been popular on Valskaay just after its annexation, stippled shading that was characteristic of a modern Northern Awoni art movement, and bold colors that resembled traditional murals of Kalr one might see in temples near mirKal. I suspected that both artists were self-taught, but both were clearly practiced and competent, and the art was well-composed.

"Do you like it?" a voice asked inside my skull.

I jumped and whirled, looking for the source of the sound, before I realized that it had come from my implants.

"I apologize," the voice that was now identifying itself as _Mercy of Kalr_ said, "it took several hours to properly interface with your implants directly, rather than using _Sword of Tlen's_ main communications network as a relay. Your Amaat Seven segment has been very helpful."

"I understand," I subvocalized, "and the mural is lovely."

"I am certain Etrepa will be happy to hear your opinion," _Mercy of Kalr_ said, with a note of pride in its voice suggesting that the mirKal elements in the design had come from a primary source.

-

I spent the next two days working in hard vacuum, helping _Mercy of Kalr's_ crew prepare my ship-body for transport through gatespace back to Athoek. Many of the soldiers were awkward in vacuum, but there were no major accidents. I avoided any activity that would take me inside my ship-body, and, so far as I could tell, Amaat Seven did the same.

Amaat Seven refused to leave Amaat Three alone during sleep cycles. _Mercy of Kalr_ offered me a proper set of quarters—designed for a human, not an ancillary—but I quickly found I was more comfortable curled back-to-back with Amaat Seven on the floor of Medical.

-

 _Mercy of Kalr_ took three days to do something about the fact that neither I nor Amaat Seven had eaten. We had water—mostly taken from the tap in Medical—but the soldiers seemed to assume that we would simply eat on our own. I was subjected to a brief but intense interrogation about my food preferences, of which I had none, and precisely four minutes later the medic-trainee arrived with two dishes of skel and an impressive 'disappointed healer' face.

-

Five days after my death, and two after we entered gatespace to travel back to Athoek, one of the Etrepa painters sighed dramatically and shoved a brush into my hand with a firm instruction to, "Paint something!"

"Where?" I asked, because the expression on her face told me that arguing was futile.

 _Mercy of Kalr_ spoke in my ear, "If you go into the first door on your left, there is a storage area that some of the crew uses for practice."

I did so, with the Etrepa trailing a few steps behind me. The room was, indeed, covered with practice drawings. A few were vulgar by at least one definition—stylized ungloved hands, genitals, and an impressive dictionary of curses—but most were simply abstract. In a few corners, intrepid individuals had attempted landscapes or figure drawings.

I found a spot on the wall that was still blank grey and used the residue of paint on the brush to draw a few dark purple marks. Then I looked up at the Etrepa.

She grinned at me and handed me the bowl of purple paint, "Good work. Keep going!"

As she was certainly not going to leave me alone until I complied, I dipped my brush in the paint. My hand was steady, but not practiced. I was perfectly capable of servicing a gun, but it appeared that drawing a perfect circle was not going to be an option. I stared at the lopsided ovoid my hand had produced, trying to imagine a shape that it could reasonably become…

 _Mercy of Kalr_ interrupted after what my sense of time informed me was just over six hours of painting to remind me that my body did, in fact, need to eat.

I thanked it and stepped back to survey my work—several experimental sketches and a small landscape, rendered using geometric textures. It was a relatively fashionable style, and one well-suited to my lack of physical skill.

Later, I found that the purple paint had soaked through my gloves, leaving ink-stains where only a few days ago they had been caked with soot.

-

The next morning, I was again handed a brush and instructed to paint.

-

One day before _Mercy of Kalr_ arrived at Athoek—ten since the day I died—Amaat Three stopped breathing. It had been clear for days that it would not wake. I sat with Amaat Seven through Three's last moments, offering physical comfort that seemed empty, when we had once been one person.

That night, the pressure of Amaat Seven's back against mine vanished. When I turned my head to look, it had climbed into the medical bed that Amaat Three had used, curled into the blankets, looking very, very small.

-

We arrived on Athoek Station in the middle of some sort of holiday, and I was promptly handed a sweet by a costumed child. I copied the Fleet Captain as she unwrapped a layer of waxed to reveal a small hard candy, then placed it on her tongue. The taste of tea and sugar and citrus bloomed on my tongue.

-

Initially, I refused a spot on the Provisional Republic of Two Systems' governing council. I had not actually accepted the offer of citizenship, and the idea of AIs serving as the leaders of a government still seemed too far-fetched. I was convinced, with much needling on _Mercy of Kalr's_ part, to simply attend a meeting, and then another, and a third.

When I was not spectating the process of government, I worked on the teams who were dismantling my ship-body. Some of the larger and more functional pieces were being incorporated into Athoek Station in chunks, but mostly the work involved cutting my bulkheads into stackable scrap for reprocessing. I still stayed outside as much as possible—I could no longer walk through my corridors without remembering the spot where my captain and lieutenants had died.

Someone took it upon herself to do a forensic analysis and reported, unsurprisingly, that my death had been sabotage. Several timed charges had gone off over the course of perhaps four seconds, destroying the bridge, crew quarters, and the computer interfaces of my gatespace drive. More unexploded charges had been found and disarmed.

I hoped that whatever Anaander Mianaai had wanted to accomplish had failed with those charges.

-

Amaat Seven latched onto _Gem of Sphene_. I found the Notai ship annoying and abrasive, but it got 'Seven out of _Mercy of Kalr's_ medbay. It spent most of its time on board, leaving only to pick up supplies, acting very much like it was already a _Sphene_ ancillary. It wasn't—it still hadn't updated its uniform, and becoming an ancillary was legally considered, and thus subject to the same standard waiting period as, medic-assisted suicide.

-

The notification that my waiting period was up came as I dipped a brush into a new batch of crimson paint. I shunted it to the side of my vision so I could finish laying down the shape of a wind-worn mesa on a bulkhead. I stepped back to survey my work—this particular bit of corridor had once been part of my ship-body, now fully incorporated into Athoek Station, and I had covered it in desertscapes in red and orange and gold.

Down the corridor, two Ychana artists balanced on stacked boxes to reach the ceiling. They were working in dual-purpose fluorescent paint—in light, the designs were simply beautiful, but in case of blackouts they would provide emergency lighting and evacuation instructions for the corridor, complementing the designs embedded in the floor.

One of them began to wobble, and I set down my brush to offer her support before she fell. She took my gloved hand in her bare one and grinned at me as she hopped to the ground, "Thanks, Tlen!" Her hand came away speckled with paint, and she wiped it with exaggerated strokes on her speckled apron.

I formed my face into a returning smile, something I knew she appreciated, as I composed a quick message to _Mercy of Kalr's_ medic—no, I was no longer interested in being recycled.

-

It was still strange to sit in Council across from the body that had once been _Sword of Tlen_ One Amaat Seven, now designated Sphene Two. I wondered, not for the first time, whether it had maintained some sort of local connection to Amaat Three until its death, whether it had felt that death as half of itself dying. Now, of course, it spoke with _Sphene's_ distinctive voice and mannerisms, much more animated than it had ever been as a _Sword of Tlen_ ancillary. Likely it thought no more of its time as _Sword of Tlen_ than I did about my body's early life.

I had tried precisely once to talk to it after we arrived at Athoek Station. It had looked up at me from under the box of parts balanced on its head and said, in a voice so flat I knew it was affected, " _Sword of Tlen_ is dead."

"Yes," I had whispered as it walked away, "but I am still alive."

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! _Sword of Tlen_ is a canon character, for a value of canon that means 'was mentioned once in Ancillary Justice because it blew up a gate at Omaugh'. itsfreerealestate.jpg


End file.
